Pete Bennett, legendary music promoter, dies at 77

Lisa Chamoff

Updated 10:47 pm, Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Pete Bennett, left, with John Lennon in 1975. Pete Bennett, a record promoter who worked with The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, and helped launch the careers of countless artists, including Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler, died Thursday of a heart attack at his home in Greenwich. He was 77. Photo courtesy of Peter Bennett Enterprises
Photo: Contributed Photo

Pete Bennett, left, with John Lennon in 1975. Pete Bennett, a...

Pete Bennett, a record promoter who worked with The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, and helped launch the careers of countless artists, including Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler, died Thursday of a heart attack at his home in Greenwich. Bennett, shown here in an undated photo, was 77. Photo courtesy of Peter Bennett Enterprises
Photo: Contributed Photo

Pete Bennett, a record promoter who worked with The Rolling Stones...

From left, Pete Bennett, Tony Bennett and Tom Cuddy at Blythedale Children's Hospital in Valhalla, N.Y., in this undated photo. Pete Bennett, a record promoter who worked with The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, and helped launch the careers of countless artists, including Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler, died Thursday of a heart attack at his home in Greenwich. He was 77.
Photo: Contributed Photo

From left, Pete Bennett, Tony Bennett and Tom Cuddy at Blythedale...

From left, Pete Bennett, Keith Richards and Mick Jaggar in Hollywood Hills just prior to a concert in Los Angeles in the 1960s. Pete Bennett, a record promoter who worked with The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, and helped launch the careers of countless artists, including Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler, died Thursday of a heart attack at his home in Greenwich. He was 77. Photo courtesy of Peter Bennett Enterprises
Photo: Contributed Photo

Pete Bennett, a record promoter who worked with The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, and helped launch the careers of countless artists, including Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler, died Thursday of a heart attack at his home in Greenwich. He was 77.

Bennett, who Billboard Magazine once dubbed "The World's No. 1 Promotion Man," was known for his charisma, artistic sensibility and an enthusiasm for music that translated into radio air time and gigs for Motown musicians and rock stars.

Bennett was named director of promotion for The Beatles' Apple Records label in 1968, following the death of Beatles manager Brian Epstein.

In 1975, when Michael Jackson and his brothers were looking to leave Motown Records, Bennett orchestrated a deal to bring the Jacksons to Epic Records, according to his son Joseph Bennett, of Greenwich.

Bennett was well known for having an eye for talent, and discovered Tyler -- born Steven Tallarico -- when the Yonkers, N.Y. resident was just starting out in the New York City music scene.

In his 2011 autobiography, "Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?" Tyler recalls that in the late 1960s Bennett, who had watched Tyler play with his bands around the city, asked if he wanted to open for The Beach Boys at a few of their upcoming shows. Bennett then arranged for Tyler and his band The Strangeurs, which became Chain Reaction, to audition for Date Records, a division of CBS.

"From winter '66 into spring '67, Chain Reaction continued to get good gigs -- in part through Pete Bennett," Tyler wrote.

When Bennett was asked over the years in interviews why his services were in such demand, he would say "I make unknowns into stars and stars into superstars."

Tom Cuddy, the former vice president of programming for ABC Radio in New York, which includes WPLJ, remembers first working with Bennett in Providence, R.I., to bring Bob Hope to a fundraiser there. Bennett delivered for the outdoor event, which attracted 200,000 people on Labor Day weekend.

Cuddy, who now lives in Stamford, said Bennett endeared himself to artists, just as his enthusiasm for music got their songs played on the radio. Cuddy accompanied Bennett backstage after an Aerosmith show in New Jersey several years ago, and Tyler came up to Bennett and told everyone, "This is the guy who believed in me before everybody else, when I was just a kid," Cuddy recalled.

"He walked into a room, a smile on his face, charismatic with a capital `C,' " Cuddy said. "Every time I saw him with an artist, they never came up and shook his hand. They came up and hugged him."

Born in May 1935 in the Bronx, N.Y., Bennett started out as a drummer, according to his son, then moved into record promotion in the 1960s, working with local groups such as Dion and the Belmonts. He helped relaunch the career of Nat King Cole, promoting "Ramblin' Rose" and "Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer," and became a "wanted promo man," Joseph Bennett said.

"He was a musician, which made his relationships with people in the music industry much closer," Bennett said.

In the early 1960s, Bennett started working with The Rolling Stones and other bands that were part of rock's British Invasion.

Bennett spent most of his life in New York, moving to Greenwich more than a decade ago, his son said.

Rick Granati, a friend of Bennett's from Beaver, Pa., and drummer with classic rock group the Granati Brothers, which toured with Van Halen in the 1980s, said he was working with Bennett on a concert scheduled for February near Pittsburgh to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the British Invasion.

"Pete is a true legend in this industry," Granati said.

In addition to his son, Bennett is survived by his wife of 47 years, Annette Bennett, and another son, Peter, also of Greenwich.